Marty Baron
What do you have a responsibility to?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 243: Marty Baron
Here’s a question. What do you have a responsibility to?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I’m asked to help their leaders discover their full potential and maximize their impact.
Welcome to the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Marty Baron. He’s the former editor of the Boston Globe, and the former executive editor of the Washington Post. The newsrooms under his leadership won 17 Pulitzer Prizes. At the Globe, he instigated the investigation into the sexual abuse conducted by the Catholic Church in Boston, and which was turned into the Academy Award winning movie, Spotlight.
The list of seminal stories that were reported under his watch would fill an entire podcast episode by themselves, from Elián Gonzalez, to the Snowden files, to the 2000 Supreme Court decided election to name but a few.
His new book, Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post, describes his 8 year leadership journey during one of the most tumultuous times in the paper’s history.
Along the way, he has learned a staggering amount about leadership.
“And I think it's important that anybody in a position of leadership think about what their responsibilities are, and make that their highest priority. You should do that by helping people be their best selves. But ultimately you need to think of, what should be the highest priority here? And what is my responsibility as a leader? And in journalism, my responsibility, first and foremost, my responsibility is to the public, to make sure that we're delivering honest and honorable journalism.”
Leadership, done well, is all about responsibility.
The trouble is that often, the definitions of leadership responsibility are too narrow and shallow. Too quickly defined and too quickly redefined when things get bumpy.
When you meet a leader who sees their responsibility as clear, for whom that responsibility is deeply held, whose commitment to it is pressure tested, and for whom their definition of responsibility has withstood the fury of time, it often feels as though they are fearless.
You ask them about being afraid and they shake their head. Not brashly, or boldly. But quizzically, almost as though they don’t understand the question.
And when you are asked to describe that person’s leadership qualities, the words that come to the fore are integrity, self awareness, and courage.
They are not words they ascribe to themselves. These are words that the rest of us use to help explain what sets them apart.
But what sets them apart is not, as I have come to learn, their integrity, their self awareness, or their courage.
What sets them apart is the absolute certainty that they will do the right thing, because their leadership is not about them.
Their leadership is about something that they believe is more important than they are.
Which might be the purest definition of leadership that I’ve heard so far.
Judge for yourself.
Here’s Marty Baron.
Charles (03:25):
Marty, welcome to Fearless. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Marty Baron (03:28):
Thank you for having me.
Charles (03:30):
I want to talk to you through a couple of different lenses. One is your own remarkable experience as a leader, most predominantly I think, at the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. And then, as we get later into the conversation, obviously I'd love to get your perspective about leadership and the evolution of leadership as we go. I interviewed Mark Thompson a couple of years ago when he was still at the New York Times, and he talked about, as a journalist, running towards the sounds of gunfire. One of the most vivid examples of that in your life, I guess, is the story that's depicted in the movie Spotlight, when under your leadership, the Boston Globe uncovered the history of abuse of children that was being perpetuated by the Catholic Church in Boston, and as we discovered, in multiple other locales around the world. Where does that willingness to put yourself in the way of the bullets, both real and metaphorical, come from?
Marty Baron (04:19):
Well, I think that's the nature of journalism. We have to cover what's occurring. And in that instance, I had read a column in the Boston Globe the day before I was to start officially. And there was this case of a priest who had been accused of abusing as many as 80 kids. And at the end, the columnist suggested the truth may never be known because the documents that might reveal it were under court seal. And of course, that piqued my interest. I mean, I had just arrived in Boston. I was interested in important and good stories for us to cover. And here was something that was really quite explosive. The suggestion was that the cardinal himself knew of this priest's abuse and yet reassigned him from parish to parish.
And thus enabling him to continue abusing kids. And if that was true, then we really needed to report on that. That was evidence of significant wrongdoing by the cardinal and by the church overall. And so, I felt like, well, we couldn't settle for just the lawyer making these allegations and the church then denying the allegations. It's very balanced, but it doesn't get us to the truth of the matter. And so, I'm a journalist, try to find a story, here's an important one. That's what drives us. And you know, people have asked me, well, this was a very powerful institution in New England. And in truth, it was, at the time. It was the single most powerful institution in New England, in my estimation. And, so people would say, “Well, weren't you concerned about that?”
But my view is that the more powerful the institution, the more capacity for it to do wrong. If we have evidence of grave wrongdoing, we have a greater obligation to investigate. If in fact there is wrongdoing, powerful institutions have a greater capacity to cover up that wrongdoing, and they can affect far more people. And certainly the church had a lot of children in its care. And this was something important for us to pursue. And so, at my first meeting on my first day, I listened to what everybody was working on that day, and nobody mentioned this case. And so I brought it up and I said, “Well, what about this? Can't we get to the truth of the matter? Can't we get beyond one side saying one thing and another side saying something else?” Somebody pointed out that the documents were sealed, and I said that I knew that, I just read that. But that maybe we should go to court to argue that these documents should be made public. I think people were shocked to hear that from their editor on the first day at the first meeting. But we then met subsequent to that meeting and talked about it and consulted our lawyer, and we decided ultimately, we decided to go ahead.
Charles (06:57):
Most people, I think, would have some degree of trepidation at being at the idea of digging in against an institution that powerful. Does any of that kind of emotion show up for you in those situations? Do you have any kind of sense of anxiety or fear about where might this go?
Marty Baron (07:15):
Not much, to be honest. I mean, I think if somebody's fearful in that way, they probably don't belong in journalism. I mean, I think the core to the mission of journalism is that we hold power to account. That's why we have journalism. I mean, that is going back to, you know, James Madison, who was the principal author of the First Amendment. He talked about freely examining public characters and measures. And so, examining means that we're not stenographers, that we have to look behind the curtain and beneath the surface. And the public characters, and the politicians, and powerful individuals in our society, government officials, business executives, what have you, even nonprofit executives, the media itself. And the measures that Madison talked about are the policies. And that's why we exist. That's why we have a free independent press in this country. And so if we're afraid to fulfill that mission, then what I would say is then, you don't belong in journalism.
Charles (08:18):
How old were you when you decided you wanted to be a journalist? How far back does that go?
Marty Baron (08:24):
As I recall, I was in junior high school. I don't know, for some reason I got interested in it. It was a daily habit in our household. We got the local newspaper. We watched national news. At the time, it was the Huntley Brinkley Report. We watched the local news. We got Time Magazine as a national publication, and then we would watch Meet the Pres and Face the Nation on the weekends. And, those Sunday shows that existed back then. And 60 Minutes was still, it was in existence then too. And so it just became part of the habit and the household, and I got interested in that. And then when I got to college, it was the time of Watergate.
And obviously I was keenly interested in that. And the role of the press. I was working on our school newspaper at my university, Lehigh University. And I got interested in investigative reporting and was sort of inspired to get into the field. And I just started down that path and couldn't turn back. My mother raised the idea of me being a lawyer. She said, well, all your friends are becoming lawyers. And I guess at the time, that was considered to be a more reputable profession than being a journalist. But I told my mother, I said, well, first of all, they're not really my friends. and secondly, it doesn't interest me. I'm interested in the law, but I wouldn't want to spend full-time working on it. And so I wanted to do something interesting and meaningful. And journalism met the bill.
Charles (09:59):
Were you drawn by a sort of a higher purpose or a higher ideal? I mean, was telling the truth, having the truth be out there, an important reference point for you?
Marty Baron (10:07):
Yeah, it was. I mean, I think. You know, it's easy to sort of take a look retrospectively and say, oh, gee, I had these grand ideas. I'm not sure I can claim that. But I certainly was very interested in democracy and power. I was very anti-elitist. There were a bunch of people in my high school who came from sort of very, you know, wealthier families, and I felt were kind of privileged, and I kind of rebelled at that. And so I did feel that it was… I would say there was a fair amount of BS and I was sort of an anti-BS kind of person. And the idea of sort of telling the truth about things, and holding people accountable, and supporting democracy was I'm sure sort of swirling around in my own head.
Charles (10:57):
When you got to the Boston Globe, and you were named the editor, how did you define success when you took that job? What did you want to be able to achieve and accomplish? What did you want to be able to look back and say, we did that under my leadership?
Marty Baron (11:10):
Well, a number of things, which is just pretty much the same things that I've carried from one place to the next. First of all, we needed to turn around our financial fortunes (laughs). The Globe at the time had really lost a lot of readers, It had lost a lot of advertising, all of that. But I also wanted us to do ambitious journalism, really consequential journalism. I felt I had done that when I was editor of the Miami Herald previously. And we had covered the Elián Gonzalez case, the Cuban boy who had been picked up at sea, and the big fight over his custody. His father, his mother had died at sea. His father was still living in Cuba.
It was a big fight over whether he should be allowed to stay in the United States, or whether he should be returned to his father in Cuba. I think we covered that well. And then we had the 2000 presidential election, a constitutional crisis, 20 years before, I had to deal with something relatively similar, involving the 2020 election, when I was editor of the Washington Post. And so, I thought Miami is just a feast for news that's kind of… it just generates some pretty crazy stories. And I was a little nervous when I went to Boston that it wouldn't be as crazy. So I was on the hunt for good stories and ambitious stories that we could do. And one, just the case of the cases of sexual abuse by priests kind of landed in my lap. It didn't really, I mean, in a way it landed in my lap. On the other hand, I saw enough there that we needed to do more work, to dig, get to the bottom of it.
Charles (12:47):
Leadership is fundamentally defined by the tension of the extremes that it has to resolve. You talk in the book about journalism as a profession and a business. A lot of the people who listen to this podcast are involved in the creative industries, marketing, communications industries. We have to navigate art and commerce and the tension between those two. What have you learned about navigating the tension that is sort of inherent to all leadership? How do you go about that?
Marty Baron (13:13):
Yeah, I mean, when I first started managing, I was pretty much at sea, and this was, I became a manager very early in my career at the age of 29. And I was working in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Times, and I became, ultimately, I became business editor of the Los Angeles Times. And I had never managed before. And our profession doesn't do a very good job of training people for management and leadership roles. In fact, for the most part, it doesn't do any training along those lines. And so, I needed something to anchor me, really. And I turned to this book, by Peter Drucker, actually, one of, I guess is one of his big books, called Management. And it really helped me, about, you know, the importance of bringing out the strengths and the people who work for you. That was important.
I knew that I needed to really understand what does a manager do, because as a reporter, I knew exactly what I did. I would report, I would write, my byline would appear on the story, story would come out, I'd move on to the next one. There was no abstraction there. I knew exactly what productivity looked like, but I wasn't clear what productivity looked like for a manager. So what I recognized is that my achievements really are the achievements of other people. And so I worked through them. And so you wanted to bring out their strengths, you wanted to help them perform as best they could. You know, one of the other lessons I took from that is, you know, the need to focus on opportunities rather than on problems, to sort of concentrate on the strengths of individuals rather than their weaknesses, to focus more on what is right as opposed to who is right.
And also the critical importance of just integrity on the part of myself that I was considered to be an honest broker. And because if people felt that their leader didn't have integrity, there was no way that they were going to follow him or her. And so, you know, that helped me, it helped me a lot, throughout my career. Whenever anybody asks me how they should think about managing other people in our business, I told them that it is only really one book that I've really read all the way through, and only one book that I recommend. And I haven't taken any real courses in this. I mean, I did get an MBA in college, but you know, those are, they don't really teach you how to be a leader, and a manager of people, I don't think. And so I would point to the Peter Drucker book and largely one chapter in it, and I'd say, read this, and then I think you're done. But the idea of trying to sort of lift people's sights to a higher purpose and to set standards at a higher level, and so that's how I approached it. And thank God I had that book to help me, otherwise I would've been lost at sea.
Charles (15:58):
Is there a difference in your mind between managing and leading? I know it's sort of an age-old debate, but I wonder through your lens, what's the difference?
Marty Baron (16:05):
Yeah, I think there is a difference in a way. I mean, I think leading is to move people in a certain direction, make sure to set the sights really high, to be ambitious in what you're trying to accomplish, to set a high standard, all of that. Management is more the day-to-day. How do you sort of oversee people? How do you take care of their needs? But I think they're closely linked because, I think in order to lead people to a higher purpose and to be more ambitious, you need to work with them in a proper way every single day. And they need to feel that you are on their side, as, in terms of helping them do their best work. Not that you have to accede to their every demand, because I certainly didn't.
I mean, one thing I talk about in my book is that I never aimed to be liked. I only aim to be respected. I felt that it was important for us to have a humane working environment, but that I was going to make demands on people that no doubt made them uncomfortable. But what I hoped is that they would understand why I was making those demands on them, and how it served the greater purpose of the institution. And I think, you know, leadership requires thinking of the institution, not thinking of yourself as an individual, but thinking, how do we all work together? How do we work collectively and collaboratively? And recognizing that we're not just a random collection of individuals, but that we are a team, and that we support each other, and that none of us can do our best work without the help of others. And that was something that I tried to emphasize in all of my time as a top editor, was that we are highly dependent on each other, and we need to support each other, and we need to think of each other in our own behaviors and in our own… just how we go about our daily work lives.
Charles (17:51):
Were you conscious of being disliked?
Marty Baron (17:55):
Oh, yeah, sure. Who's not? I mean, everybody likes to be liked, right? And I think people, some, most people are acutely aware of that sort of thing. And I think a lot of people, including many managers, including many in our profession, tend to manage so that they will be liked. But I don't think that's the right way to manage or to lead. You're basically making concessions to everybody's individual needs. But everybody's individual needs doesn't necessarily serve the greater collective purpose of the institution.
Charles (18:28):
How did you move through the reality of not being liked? I ask the question simply because the ideals you're describing are aspirational, and what gets in the way for a lot of people is they need to be liked. And when they sense that they're not being liked, it causes them concern at least, and it causes them to change their behavior. How did you move past the emotional reality of accepting the fact, yes, I know you don't like me in this moment, but I'm going to do the right thing?
Marty Baron (18:52):
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think I've always tried to think of my own responsibilities, and that fundamentally, my responsibility is to the institution and to the sort of a proper code of journalism. And I needed to honor that above all else. I felt that if I did that, that people would ultimately understand that, and that that was core to actually being a leader with integrity. And I've had people tell me that, and I've appreciated that, that they, even though they may not have agreed with me, they understood that my interests were with the institution and making sure that we achieved our greater goals. And that I wasn't doing things out of any malicious intent, that I was doing it because this is what we needed to do collectively to advance, to be successful journalistically and commercially.
And so, I just decided that I have to, I mean, that's my, ultimately, that's my real responsibility. And I think it's important that anybody in a position of leadership think about what their responsibilities are, and make that their highest priority. You should do that by helping people be their best selves. But ultimately you need to think of, what should be the highest priority here? And what is my responsibility as a leader? And in journalism, my responsibility, first and foremost, my responsibility is to the public, to make sure that we're delivering honest and honorable journalism.
Charles (20:24):
Did you like leading? Did you always want to lead?
Marty Baron (20:28):
Yeah. Weirdly, yes, I would say, I don't know where that came from, but I had been editor of my high school newspaper. I was editor of my college newspaper in my junior year. And I always thought I really liked it. I liked having an influence over the total product, rather than just doing my own individual thing. And so, I always had, as my goal, my career goal is to be the editor of a major news organization. And thankfully, that's what happened. I became the top editor of three different major news organizations. But I liked influencing the total product, and I actually felt that I was good at it, in many ways better at that than being just being a reporter. And I came to understand that that is a skill in and of itself.
A lot of people don't think of it that way, but it really is. You really notice it when it's missing (laughs), when you see leadership skills missing. And so I felt I had had success in running… initially, I ran a department at the Los Angeles Times, and then I ran an entire section. The department had 60 people. And then the section that I ran, which was basically covering the entirety of Orange County, California, we had 165 people at the time, at the LA Times. And then, you know, when I was at the Miami Herald, I oversaw 350 people initially. And then I got to the Boston Globe, and that was over 500 people. And then at the Washington Post, initially about 580. And by the time I left, it was close to a thousand.
Charles (22:09):
And given your reference to the importance of maintaining or developing the standards and the ethos of the organization that you work for, the choice of organization that you choose to work for becomes incredibly important under that reference point, right? I mean, I see a lot of people who take the job because they want the title, but it feels like you are more judicious than that, that you were looking carefully at, does this organization have the right kind of standards? And am I able to affect those in a positive way? Is that fair?
Marty Baron (22:38):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think sometimes people want these management and leadership positions, yes, because of the title, because of the status, because of the money that comes with it. But I think people shouldn't accept those positions unless they're willing to take on, also, the burdens of leadership. And there are plenty of burdens of leadership, as well. And so I think that's unfair. I think it's unfair to the people you're going to oversee if you're not going to do it properly. I think people are looking for leadership. They're not just looking for somebody who accedes to their every demand. And they may in the moment, but over the long term, they're going to understand that they need something more than that. And so, yeah, I mean, I felt that I like the responsibilities.
I like the idea that I was, there was a challenge there, that there was some goal that I needed to achieve. When I went to the Washington Post, the paper was really suffering. It was constantly cutting. It had no model for sustainability. That's the reason why the Graham family sold it to Jeff Bezos in 2013, is they couldn't see a way out of a continuing slide in the fortunes of the organization. But I sort of liked the idea that maybe I could find a way to turn it around. If I didn't, they’d get rid of me. I understood that, comes with the territory. But I thought it could be, it was an interesting challenge, and I wanted to see if I could actually contribute. And I was helped, obviously, ultimately, by Jeff Bezos's acquisition of the Post. That helped a lot. He had new ideas, good ideas, he had resources that he could invest. He had a long-term perspective. He helped us come up with a new strategy, and put all, put his money behind it. And that was really a big plus. But I also think I made a contribution of my own.
Charles (24:34):
You talk about the burdens of leadership. Was there a cost to you of leading any of these organizations?
Marty Baron (24:42):
Yeah, I, there was, I mean, particularly toward the end, and it contributed to my, it wasn't the only reason I decided to retire in 2021. But it did. I mean, first of all, it's an incredibly demanding profession. As I mentioned, if you're looking for a sea of calm, this is not the profession to be in. I was accustomed to the lack of calm in covering the news. I wasn't so accustomed to the lack of calm internally. I think that in the current era, a lot of employees have a different expectation for how they should be managed. A lot of people in journalism wanted to express themselves on social media in a way that I felt was not appropriate. My efforts to enforce our standards in that regard were met with a lot of resistance on the part of the staff.
I would call it an uprising (laughs) against me as a result of that. There was a petition signed by hundreds of people who worked for me, objecting to the enforcement of these standards. And yet, I continue to stand by those principles and those standards. I think they're the appropriate ones. But it's one thing, you know, to do battle with a President, for example, like Donald Trump. But it's much more difficult to do battle with the people who you work with side by side, who you see every day, who you consider to be, who are your colleagues. That's much more difficult. And that took a toll. Plus the, just the nature of the business these days. You know, when I got into the business, typically newspapers were monopolies or oligopolies in their communities.
And that's not the case anymore. There's enormous amount of competition, of course, with the internet and with multiple cable news networks and what have you, new digital only sites, things like that. Plus there's an expectation on the part of the public that they'll receive news instantaneously. So it's not only a 24/7 job now, it's 24/7 every minute. And we actually had metrics at the Post that measured us on the speed of our alerts to our readers. And the metrics were measured by the second, actually. So if we were a second behind our competitor, we were number two, and all anybody looked at was the actual ranking, not the time difference between number one and number two. And so that was a very punishing metric, and that those sorts of things take their toll.
And then there's just the lack of sleep. You know, I would go to sleep at about 11:45 at night. I would get up at 5:15 in the morning, check our site, check our competitors’, all of that. And I just wasn't sleeping very well and sleeping very much, and I had a medical condition, as well, that made it especially difficult. And so all of that together, and the tension, the internal tensions, certainly took a toll on me. And when you've done it for as long as I had, which was 20 years of three different news organizations, each one coming in from the outside, having to get to know a new organization and know lots of new people, new to me, at some point you say, well, okay, maybe I've done this. Maybe I don't have anything to prove anymore. Maybe I, who knows, maybe I've reached my expiration date. And I came to feel that maybe I had reached my expiration date, and at least I was just so physically tired and felt mentally pressured, as well, because of the internal fights, that I just felt it was time to go.
Charles (28:21):
When you have a petition signed against you by every member of staff, for most of us that would create an existential crisis. How did you meet that moment? Where did you turn to for support, and how did you respond to that?
Marty Baron (28:35):
Well, one of the problems with these jobs as editors of newspapers is almost nowhere you can turn for support. You know, you can turn to your publisher, who's your boss, but that's not always satisfying. And sometimes when you have problems in these positions, it’s because you're having some sort of conflict with the publisher (laughs). And then you can't talk to the people on the staff, including people who are your friends, because very quickly word gets out to everybody. I'm not sure there is a… these things just get out. They just get out. And it's very hard to talk to your competitors, because they're your competitors. And, I mean, I did have, I was friendly, very friendly with the editor of the New York Times, Dean Baquet. We were able to talk, from time to time, and that was always helpful because it's very helpful to talk to somebody who's in a position like yours who understands what you're going through. So it was helpful to have those conversations. but, you know, perhaps other than Dean, I don't think there really was anybody else I could talk to. And so that was part of the problem, is that I was internalizing it all. And I think it's important for anybody in a position like this, to have somebody they can reach out to, to at least vent. Sometimes venting just helps. And sometimes they have something wise to contribute, some sound advice that they can provide.
Charles (30:02):
You talk in the book actually about your relationship with Fred Ryan, your sixth publisher, as you pointed out to him, and to us. When you were describing that relationship, one of the pieces that really struck me was your own sort of struggle with recognizing how you and he were different, and your own frustration, I sensed a couple of times early on, with the fact that you were having a hard time controlling your emotions in a way that you thought he was particularly expert at, and that that caused some problems for you early on, perhaps actually more so for you than it did for him. Knowing yourself, I think, is one of the most underappreciated aspects of successful leadership. What can you tell us about the process of coming to understand yourself better and better, so that you could, in fact, have relationships with people like Fred in that situation who are different than you, but that you need to get on with?
Marty Baron (30:51):
Yeah, well, I'm a fairly introspective person anyway. And so, I think that helps to some degree. You don't want to be too, you don't want to be introverted, but you want to be introspective. So I think that helps. I also, you know, I mean, I always try, try to keep in mind, what are the goals that we need to achieve as an institution? And so as I thought about those goals and our capacity to achieve them, it was obvious to me that I needed to develop a better relationship with my boss, the publisher. And so it concluded that the way things were was not good for him, and it wasn't good for me. And beyond that, it was just wasn't good for the institution, and that I needed to… one of the most important priorities for me was to figure out how to work better with him and to make sure that that was one of my primary considerations, to spend more time on that and be more patient, maybe communicate better myself, maybe control my emotions better. And so I just came to the conclusion that I needed to, I really needed to work on that.
Charles (32:08):
You worked for Jeff Bezos, I think, arguably one of the most influential leaders of the last decade, maybe longer than that, now. What did you observe in his leadership that you found impressive?
Marty Baron (32:20):
Yeah. One of the things that (laughs) struck me was just how optimistic he is. I think there are a lot of people in our profession who, we tend to see the darker side of things. And so we tend to be, I think, overly pessimistic about our field. And as I've told a lot of people over the years, I just don't know anybody who's been successful by expecting they're going to fail. And so I think it's really important that we expect that we succeed. I don't think we can afford to be pessimistic. I think we need to be optimistic. But it was impressive to me that, you know, Bezos came into our field, one that he hadn't been involved in previously, by not being discouraged by all the bad, you know, all the bad numbers that he saw at the beginning.
I mean, all of us thought he had bought a sinking ship. And that's what I was thinking when we first met in his boathouse in Medina, Washington. And it's like, he could put this sinking ship right here in this boathouse. But he just focused on how we could succeed. And one of the first things that he focused on, and that he emphasized, and I think he's famous for this, of course, is his entire emphasis on the consumers and the needs of the consumers, even to the exclusion of the needs of the advertisers. So in news organizations, there's an enormous amount of deference paid. Traditionally, there's been an enormous amount of deference paid to the advertising department, because they consider themselves to be the revenue generating department, and frequently the newsroom is viewed as the spending department.
I always resisted that description because I would always point out if we didn't have a product, they wouldn't have any sales. So a lot of publishers and a lot of owners, they're very deferential to the advertising department. But the problem is, what interests advertisers isn't always what interests readers. And so while certainly in some of the needs of advertisers need to be satisfied, the primary focus should be on how do we get more people to read us, and how do we get them to be more satisfied, and how do we get them to move from being readers to being subscribers? And how do we get them essentially addicted to our product? And so, Jeff was very, very focused on, how do we satisfy consumers? And I thought that was really good.
The other thing that was interesting is that he was able, I mean, at the beginning, he wanted us to become, of course, completely digital, very digital, but he also understood, he's not somebody who repudiates traditions and repudiates the past. He looks at the past to say, what can that help, how can that instruct us in adapting and embracing a future? So he offered what I thought was one of the best outlines of the best qualities of a print newspaper that I've ever heard. Maybe the best. So, you know, he talked about how traditional newspapers, print newspapers, offer the signals through their headlines of priorities, how newspapers offer a sense of completion, that you can come to the end and feel that you've done your job for the day.
Things like that, and a sense of hierarchy that a newspaper conveys, and all of that. And so he said, how do we take those qualities and transfer that to, for example, a new app that we were developing? And, I thought it was really an interesting and refreshing way to talk about things. And at the time, there was also, there were some people on our staff who felt like, well, we need to just ditch the Washington Post name. But he understood that there was real value in the brand, and he made clear that's what he had bought, that brand. And he did, he viewed it as an incredible asset, not as a burden, which a lot of people in our business were beginning to view the traditional brands, legacy brands as a burden, as opposed to an opportunity. And he recognized that these brands represented opportunities, not burdens.
Charles (36:30):
How do you think history will see him and his leadership? Will he go down as one of the sort of reference points leaders? Is he sort of Ford, Edison, Jobs-like in the way that he's changed society and culture?
Marty Baron (36:43):
Well, I think that story is yet to be written, to tell you the truth. I mean, I think that is really going to be, is definitely yet to be written. You know, obviously they're huge and understandable controversies about the impact of a company like Amazon on the retail landscape, its impact on its workers, whether it's doing right by its workers, it's vacuum-like effect on people's personal information, privacy, and things like that. I think that has all yet to be written. And also with regard to his private ventures, which would include Blue Origin and the Post, with regard to Blue Origin, it's fallen behind SpaceX, the Musk company, Elon Musk Company.
So it definitely needs to catch up if it's to fulfill his own ambitions for Blue Origin. So that's yet to be written. And with the Post, they've experienced some serious financial difficulties in the last couple of years. And I think the real test there will be, can he find a path forward? Can he restore it to profitability? We did have six straight years of profitability during my time there, so he did turn it around. But we were inadequately prepared for the post-Trump period, and did not do as much as we should have in comparison with our primary competition, which was the New York Times. And so, I think things can be turned around there. It needs his attention. It needs a whole variety of things. So I think his legacy at the Post is yet to be written, as well. So I would say it's definitely an incomplete. I would give it an incomplete grade (laughs).
Charles (38:25):
That’s fair enough. Pivoting, perhaps as inevitably we must to Trump before we wrap. Why do you think so many people are drawn to his leadership?
Marty Baron (38:37):
Well, I wouldn't say that his leadership has been effective. There were a lot of things that he said he would accomplish that he did not, in fact, accomplish. So, just by one example, he said he was going to have a great alternative to the Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare. He didn't offer anything. He actually, when he entered office, he said he had one practically written. We never saw it. He said he was going to accomplish infrastructure. It didn't happen; it happened under the Biden administration. So there are a lot of things that he simply did not achieve. But as to why he draws a lot of followers, I think that in the country there are a lot of communities that have really struggled. There's no question, they've lost industries. There were people are working at jobs that pay them less than they made before.
There aren't opportunities for their kids. There's also, you know, a long strain of conspiracy-thinking in this country. And I think it's more pronounced today than it was in the past. All you have to do, look back at the, actually, I just pretty much finished reading, the historian Richard Hofstadter's book, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. There's been a long strain of conspiracy-thinking in American politics. And people who think like that, I think are naturally drawn to Trump, because all he does is spin conspiracies and make it appear that everybody's the enemy, everybody's out to get you. That there's a hidden agenda that people aren't talking about, that the people in power are almost conspiring against the American public, and all of that, all of the characteristics of that.
And on top of that, I think there's some really important cultural issues that come into play. And we see that, we see that all the time. And so, I think that people who don't like the direction of the country culturally, are obviously supporters of his. So I think there are a whole variety of issues. And then in the current environment, there are people who are, you know, have their concerns about Biden and his age and all of that. I mean, Trump isn't that much younger, by the way. But he seems to project a lot of energy, even if what he's saying doesn't, if you actually look at the actual sentences, they don't actually make any sense. It would be very difficult to diagram a sentence uttered by Donald Trump and to understand exactly what he is saying.
But he taps a nerve in American society of people who are aggrieved for one reason or another, people who see the elites out to get, the so-called elites out to get them, or who are ignoring them, or hold them in contempt or condescending to them, which is how they view it. And they want somebody to go to Washington and punch all the elites in the nose, and knock them out. And that's why he's an attraction.
Charles (41:36):
I said to somebody earlier today, it seems like we're faced with the choice between an old democracy or no democracy, and perhaps people who are worried about Biden's age should just accept the fact he's old, but represents a clear choice versus the alternative. What's your feeling about the future of democracy in this country? Two years from now for instance, do you think we will be a functioning democracy?
Marty Baron (41:59):
Well, I'm not sure I want to predict, but I would say that democracy is very much under threat today in this country. No question about it. We're not the only country where it's under threat, but we're a particularly important one, where it's under threat. And that is because, look, I mean, all you have to do is look at what Trump is talking about. He's saying a lot of things that are simply undemocratic. In fact, they're authoritarian. They're the definition of authoritarianism. It's the only politician I've heard talk about suspending the US Constitution. He talks about using the US military to suppress what are totally legitimate protests in this country. He talked about bringing treason charges against the then outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and most likely executing him.
He's talked about treason charges against the media, particularly Comcast, which owns NBC and MSNBC. He's talked about all the complaints to the Republicans about weaponizing US government. He talks openly about weaponizing the US government. He's talked about using the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies, that he intends to do that. That he intends to endeavor to put his political opponents in jail. He's talked about crushing the free and independent press in this country. You know, it's not an opinion to call that authoritarian. If you were to look at the definition of authoritarianism, that is the definition of authoritarianism. And so, I think we should be aware of that. I think the American public should be highly aware of what is likely to happen, and what almost certainly will happen in the second Trump administration, if there is one. And so I would say that democracy's very much under threat. So that's a sad statement to make. I'm not predicting the results of the election. I don't, I'm not a political pundit. But I think you don't need to be a political pundit to envision what a second Trump administration would be like because he talks about it openly.
Charles (44:07):
And last question for you, as you look at the future, what do we need from leaders?
Marty Baron (44:15):
We need a lot. I mean, I would say that a core integrity, first of all, I think that's really missing. I would love to see people move away from the performative nature of their jobs. That includes people in media. But it also includes, especially people in politics, who are just engaging in performative behavior. It's not leadership. They just have the title leaders. There's not actually leading. They're following, and they're performing for their audience. And that is a real problem. I think we need empathy. People need to understand each other. People with different political views, people who live different lives, that should cut across races, ethnicities, political ideologies, life experiences, all of that. We could use a lot more of leaders putting themselves in other people's shoes and understanding where they're coming from.
I think that would help them lead. We could use a lot more leaders who listen rather than just talk. I think we've got a lot of talkers in our society today. And what we could use more of are people who truly listen. And I would say that we could use some more, and I don't think this contradicts the idea of leadership, is that we could use something more humility, that people could recognize that they don't have all the answers, that other people might have the answers. that we should hear what they have to say, take it into account. And that requires a level of humility. And there appears to be very little of that in our society today, as well.
Charles (45:53):
I really want to thank you for coming on the show. Your perspective, your insights, your observations, your advice, I think have never been more necessary. And I hope people buy the book Lesion of Power, and take as much away from it as I have. Thank you so much for your time today.
Marty Baron (46:07):
Thanks for having me.
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